Conventionally, there is no suitable technical solution that facilitates convenient sharing of genetic data. This has led to “genomic islands,” where large quantities of genetic data are consolidated in several discrete sources that cannot interoperate with one another. Genomic islands can be a hindrance to treatment of a patient when different genetic test results are scattered among different sources. Genomic islands can also be a hindrance to genetic research, which often requires larges amounts of genetic data. In order for a healthcare worker to gain access to the results of all genetic tests a patient has undergone, the healthcare worker must contact each genetic laboratory for the results individually. Sometimes the healthcare worker must rely on the patient to bring in a print-out copy of the genetic test results. This can be problematic, as genetic laboratories can move to different locations, go out of business, etc. Additionally, genetic test results from different genetic tests can be presented in a variety of different formats, such as PDF, JSON, XML, VCF, etc., which can make it difficult to analyze large sets of genetic data.
Electronic health record applications (EHRs) are computer-executable applications that are configured to assist healthcare workers with providing care to patients. EHRs are configured with functionality pertaining to patient intake, patient billing, insurance billing, prescription generation, maintaining a record of patient care over time, etc. EHRs are often used by healthcare workers at the point of care (i.e., at a time when the healthcare worker is providing care to a patient). For example, a healthcare worker may retrieve data from a patient record maintained by an EHR to relatively quickly ascertain problems being experienced by the patient, medications currently being taken by the patient, and so forth. EHRs, however, are currently ill-equipped to handle genetic test results from genetic laboratories. In other words, conventionally there is no suitable technology that allows for an EHR (or other application) to provide a healthcare worker with genetic test results from arbitrary laboratories.